I don’t know about “idiot,” but yeah, it’s not a cool thing to do. If she doesn’t charge her audience for the concert, then sure, whatever. As a trained musician who is seeking to make a living from playing music, I understand the outrage. While I was in school, there was this tacit understanding that people swap favors – I play your gig, you play mine. Which was awesome. But as soon as people *could* pay the band, they did. Even if it was just a few bucks at first. Because music is a very community-focused thing. And in the past, it always seemed like Amanda Palmer understood this.

I think that that’s where Amanda Palmer ran into problems. She very publicly had an extremely successful kickstarter campaign. So she’s got the captivated audience that many musicians would die for. This puts her in the position to help out fellow musicians, just as I’m sure others helped her out back in the day. While it’s admirable to invite fans up on stage, it’s a whole different story when those fans are taking the place of people who could’ve (and in most comparable cases would’ve) gotten paid. A better way to go about it would be to have fans add to a (paid) string/horn section. I truly believe that it’s in an artist’s best interests and the best interests of music as a whole if, when people *can* pay their fellow musicians for their services, they do. Especially on tour, seeing as a good portion of an artist’s revenue comes from touring these days.